Four months, one sheep, and her first sweater ever

Content creator Macy Gilliam spent four months and $736 turning raw wool into a single fleece sweater, a project she called "Sheep to Sweater." It began in May, when she visited a New York sheep farm and collected four pounds of fleece from a Merino named Frannie. The raw wool cost her $48. Everything after that cost her time. She scoured the fleece in hot water and lanolin, learning the hard way that lanolin poured down a drain clogs it immediately. She picked, carded and spun by hand, then dyed the yarn with crushed beetles. Getting through her first bag alone took two hours. Then, having never knit before, she learned on the job, only to discover she did not have enough yarn and had to start again. "This is my way of reconnecting with the way things are made," Gilliam said. The most expensive part of a sweater, she found, was never the wool. It was the labor.